Adam Price: Look, if you are saying you welcome, actually, critical challenge for Ministers and going off script, why has he been asked or has he felt it necessary to issue an apology? Talking about automation, the last thing we want is Ministers that act like robots. Lee Waters is correct in his analysis, and actually, as you mention Ieuan Wyn Jones, Ieuan, when he was Minister, published an economic...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, the ministerial code says Ministers should apologise if they say something that is wrong. Why should your Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport have to apologise for saying something that is right? [Laughter.]
Adam Price: Which bit? Are you denying—? The BBC is reporting that the economy Minister apologises for his comments about the Welsh economy. I must say, reading the report—reading Ken Skates re-interpreting for us what Lee Waters really meant—was a bit like reading that famous tweet by Andrew Adonis extolling the virtues of Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit policy. Now, I can understand your difficulty with...
Adam Price: In terms of what happens now, have you studied recent developments around Ford's closure of its French plant in Blanquefort announced last year, with the loss of 850 jobs? A buyer was found by the French Government that put together an investment package, but the Ford Motor Company blocked the sale on commercial grounds, leading to the loss of those 850 jobs. Would you support a policy of...
Adam Price: In your own list of ministerial engagements and meetings for last year, there is only one meeting listed there with Ford during that entire crucial year. Now, when I asked earlier this month if you would fly out to the Michigan headquarters of the Ford Motor Company, you said your preferred plan of action was to meet very soon with senior Ford Europe decision makers, because this was a Ford...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, why did the taskforce the Welsh Government established to save Ford Bridgend in October 2017 meet 10 times in the first 10 months of its existence and then meet just once in the last 11 months, in March of this year, nearly two months after the company announced 1,000 job losses? How did you move from an average of one meeting a month to around one meeting a...
Adam Price: Many people will feel particularly uncomfortable in seeing universities in Wales making hundreds of staff redundant while at the same time paying salaries to their vice-chancellors, who, according to the latest HEFCW figures, earn £254,000 on average. Now, outwith the university sector, the salary of the chief executive of the Development Bank of Wales is among the highest in the public...
Adam Price: But, Minister, you yourself have identified this as a huge vacuum five years ago. Where have you been? The committee itself says that we are still as far away from delivering equality in terms of language choice as we were at the beginning of this Assembly. There's been no progress. And may I turn to another issue that is centrally important to the future of the language, namely employment?...
Adam Price: Thank you, Llywydd. First Minister, I have a right to ask you a question in Welsh in this Parliament, but my 84-year-old father doesn’t have a right to ask a question in Welsh to his GP, his optician, his pharmacist or his dentist. Now, five years ago, you said personally that the core of the case for improving the use of the Welsh language in primary care is the possibility that it’s...
Adam Price: Finally, if I can turn to another matter, First Minister, interviewed during your leadership campaign on 19 November last year, you said, 'I think we've reached the point where we need more Assembly Members to discharge all the responsibilities that the Assembly now has.' You went on to say, 'There is never a good time to go out and say to people that you want to expand the number of people...
Adam Price: The first line of defence here, of course, is to fight this unconscionable proposal by Ford and we, on this side obviously, as Bethan Jenkins said, wish to express our total solidarity with the members of the GMB and Unite unions who will be balloting for industrial action on Friday. But, obviously, the Government's—. One of the Government's roles is to prepare contingency plans, and I was...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. I think it's fair to say that Ford's decision appeared to be a genuine shock to the Welsh Government on Friday. The combination of factors that contributed to the decision, though, would have been less of a surprise, because of Ford's previous statements, especially its announcement in January that it was shedding over 1,000 jobs at the factory. The economy Minister referred...
Adam Price: Of course, I think the First Minister would accept that, on our side, naturally, we're going to say that we would have liked this decision to have been made earlier. There clearly is an opportunity cost in here, financially. Perhaps the First Minister could give us, actually, the full estimated total for the cost to the public purse, including the inquiry itself, the traffic modelling,...
Adam Price: I think we need to pay tribute to the campaigners, both locally and nationally, who urged the Government to safeguard one of Wales’s greatest treasures, the Gwent levels. Now, I would appreciate it if the First Minister could tell us about the role of the important and significant declaration—more significant than ever now—in terms of the climate emergency, given the role of young...
Adam Price: When a Government gets it wrong, admits its mistake and endeavours to put matters right, maybe it's my Sunday school upbringing, but I think the proper response in the first instance is to praise the repentant for seeing the error of their ways. And there will be many, many hallelujahs uttered across Wales in response to this u-turn, as there was to the u-turn last week. And I'm pleased to...
Adam Price: I welcome that. Could I urge the Welsh Government at a national level also to see if there is a possibility in terms of it taking a stake? Some of us will remember, of course, South Wales Transport. It still has a depot in the village of Tycroes, which the Minister for Economy and Transport and I know very well. So, there is an opportunity here. Finally, I mentioned Cardiff Airport, which...
Adam Price: We, on this side, of course, welcome moves towards the re-regulation of bus services. In the interim, I was wondering if the First Minister would care to say whether the acquisition of First Cymru could be a great opportunity for Swansea to follow both the Cardiff Bus and Newport Bus models, and indeed you could say there are similarities with the situation in Cardiff Airport, in...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, in the midst of your wrestling with the decision about the M4 relief road and its implications for investment in public transport, have you been made aware that Aberdeen-based First Group is poised to divest itself of its UK bus operations, including in Swansea, where its subsidiary, First Cymru, runs the local bus service that also extends east to Bridgend...
Adam Price: Two opinion polls in the last three days have placed your party in third place for the European elections. One has placed you third for elections to this Senedd on the regional list. If you do come third on Thursday, this will be the first time this has happened to the Labour Party in an all-Wales election since the year of the Labour Party's formation in 1900, when Keir Hardie was elected as...
Adam Price: First Minister, you're often fond of saying how disappointed you are in me, and I have to say, based on that performance, it's not half as disappointed as I am in you. Hywel Ceri Jones, who has been an adviser to your Government, this week cited the fact that the leader of your party has been deliberately ambiguous in the question of a second public vote on EU membership as his reason for...
